Florida Hockey Apparel

Eleven defunct Florida hockey teams, from a 1930s league in Miami to the ECHL and roller hockey years, on shirts, hoodies, hats, and jerseys you will not find anywhere else.

Florida had pro hockey before it had air conditioning. A four-team league skated in Miami in the winter of 1938, one of its clubs was nominally from Havana, and the whole thing was gone by spring. The pattern held for sixty years: Jacksonville, St. Petersburg, Tallahassee, and Orlando each got a team, and each one eventually packed up. Every one of these teams is gone now. This is where they live on.

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Florida Hammerheads Florida / Jacksonville Rockets Havana Tropicals Jacksonville Bullets Miami Clippers Miami Screaming Eagles Orlando Jackals Orlando Rollergators Suncoast Suns Tallahassee Tiger Sharks Tampa Bay Tritons

Florida hockey history

The Tropical Hockey League. In the winter of 1938–39 a promoter put four teams on an indoor rink in the Miami area and called it the Tropical Hockey League. The Miami Clippers were one of them. The Havana Tropicals were another, and although the name promised Cuba, the club played its games in Florida like everyone else; the Cuban angle was mostly for the tourists. The league lasted a single season, which was about par for Florida hockey for the next half century.

Jacksonville and St. Petersburg. The Jacksonville Rockets joined the Eastern Hockey League in 1964 and played at the Jacksonville Coliseum for most of a decade, spending a few of those seasons in the late 1960s under the name Florida Rockets before switching back. Across the state the Suncoast Suns played at the Bayfront Center in St. Petersburg from 1971, first in the EHL and then in the Southern Hockey League that replaced it, before folding in the mid-1970s. Jacksonville got a second chance with the ECHL's Jacksonville Bullets, who played at the Coliseum from 1992 to 1996.

The team that never played. The Miami Screaming Eagles were one of the World Hockey Association's founding franchises in 1972 and never took the ice. They signed Bernie Parent away from the Toronto Maple Leafs, which was the deal that convinced the hockey world the WHA was serious, and then failed to get an arena built; the franchise moved to Philadelphia before the first season and became the Blazers. The Screaming Eagles exist entirely as a logo, which is a fine thing for a logo to be.

Tallahassee. The Tallahassee Tiger Sharks were the ECHL's team at the Leon County Civic Center from 1994 to 2001, seven seasons that ended when the franchise was moved to Macon.

Roller hockey. Roller Hockey International put four teams in Florida in four years. The Florida Hammerheads played the 1993 and 1994 summers in West Palm Beach, the Tampa Bay Tritons had one season in 1994, and Orlando had two different teams at the Orlando Arena: the Orlando Rollergators in 1995 and the Orlando Jackals from 1996, who won the league championship in their first season.

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